The Blueberry Solution

§  I have reached the inescapable conclusion that there is no possible explanation.  § 

A few years ago while having lunch with a friend, I tucked my debit card into that discreet little leatherette envelope to pay my tab. It was returned to me while my friend and I chatted, and so it was several minutes before I opened it to fill in the tip and sign the receipt.

It was at that point I discovered that, although the bill was mine, the card was not! The card in the envelope belonged to someone else. Horrified, I flagged down the first available server and demanded to see the manager. Fortunately, the table of guests to which my card had been incorrectly handed was still present; equally horrified, we exchanged our cards. Faced with deathray glares from two enraged patrons, and my “enraged half-Italian woman talking with her hands!” demand to know exactly how this error had occured, the manager assured both of us that we would NOT be billed for our lunches, owing to their inexcusable mishap. In an overabundance of caution, I later called my bank to report the incident, canceled my card and went through the inconvenience of waiting for a new one to be issued.

About two weeks later, my statement arrived. I had been billed for the luncheon, after all. The very next day I stormed over to the restaurant and, pinholing the manager, demanded in my best William Shatner-esque voice, How…Does…This…Even…Happen?!”        

How does this even happen? or its twin, How is this even possible?  seem to be recurring themes in my existence. Not long after the card incident, I ruined a favorite top by dropping a frozen blueberry on it without noticing. By the time I realized what I’d done, the berry had thawed and irrevocably stained my pink shirt. Countless stain removers failed to remove the mark, and the shirt, which I had really liked, ended up being tossed into the rag bag.

However, the blueberry stain came to mind when a new dark blue sweatshirt, having been washed the first time, came out of the laundry with a couple of pale marks indicating that the dye had not been consistent. There were two small, faded areas. It occurred to me that if a frozen blueberry could irrevocably stain a pink cotton shirt, surely it could re-dye a faded area on a dark blue sweatshirt. So I happily crushed a couple of blueberries into the pale spots and left them to sit for twenty-four hours, sure I’d found a solution to the problem.

Except I hadn’t. It didn’t work at all. Once I’d removed the blueberries and rinsed the areas, they were just as faded as they had been before I tried the blueberry solution.

Blue marker pen applied to the spots failed, also—the same marker that, drizzled across a white teeshirt, ruined it. Blue ballpoint ink, ditto.

How is this even possible? How can it be that the very substances that stain and destroy clothes I want to keep, fail to stain and repair an item of clothing I also want to keep?

I have the same question about power cords that tangle while out of sight and untouched, and necklace chains, sitting undisturbed in a drawer of my jewelry box, which somehow jumble and twist themselves into a welter of kinks and knots. I mean, really! Think about it. Last fall I set up a new computer. I snaked most of the cords back behind my desk and up to the top of the file cabinet where the surge suppressor rests. A few weeks later, though, I needed to move the desk. I found all the cords—all the utouched, hidden cords—wound into a muddle of confusion and tangles.

They were BEHIND the desk. No one and nothing, not even my marauding cats, were touching those cords. How is this even possible? How does this even happen?

I have reached the inescapable conclusion that there is no possible explanation except for that of Evil Gremlins. Tiny, long fingered minions of evil who sneak in under cover of darkness and gleefully bestir necklace chains and power cords into a hopelessly tangled mass.

Gremlins alone can explain the necklace chains and power cords, and perhaps even the swapped debit cards.

But despite my best philosophical maunderings on the subject, to this day I still haven’t a clue as to why The Blueberry Solution…wasn’t.

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